Alleged $2b Chinese loan: Buhari wants to mortgage Nigeria’s future –Fayose

FROM WOLE BALOGUN, ADO EKITI

Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose has raised the alarm over President Muhammadu Buhari’s scheduled trip to China to borrow $2 billion as part of the N1.84 trillion to be borrowed to finance the 2016 budget, describing the move as an attempt to mortgage the fu­ture of Nigeria and its people.

The governor, who said the 2016 budget was not a reflec­tion of the present economic reality. Added that; “By the time they borrow N1.84 tril­lion to fund their N6.06 billion budget; I wonder how Nigeria will survive in 2017 when the Federal Government will be servicing debt with about 50 percent of its budget.”

It has been widely reported that Nigeria wants to raise about $5 billion abroad to cover part of its 2016 bud­get deficit. This was said to be projected to hit N3 trillion ($15 billion) due to heavy in­frastructure spending at a time when the slump in global oil prices has slashed its export revenues.

In a release issued on Friday by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, Fayose said; “In elementary economics, you don’t propose to spend more when your in­come reduces and I still can’t understand this Buharinomics in which Nigeria is going to spend N6.06 billion with crude oil bench mark of $38 per bar­rel when the country’s budget was N4.5 trillion in 2015 when crude oil bench mark was $53 per barrel.

He said since the President claimed to have recovered and still recovering trillions of Nai­ra looted from the treasury and over N3 trillion saved from the Treasury Single Account (TSA), the 2016 budget should be funded with the recovered fund.

The governor said he was alerting Nigerians of the dan­ger in the Federal Government plan to fund the 2016 budget with loan, adding that; “To­morrow, it will be said of me that I did not keep silent when Nigeria was being mortgaged to unnecessary debt.

He warned that with the pro­posed N1.84 trillion borrow­ing, $2 billion of which Presi­dent Buhari is already going to borrow in China, the nation may soon be going the way of Greece because Nigeria will be borrowing N5 billion per day for the next 365 days.

“If your income was N200, 000 per month last year and your expenditure was N195, 000 per month; does it make any economic sense for you to propose to spend N300, 000 per month this year that your income has reduced to N120, 000?

“Only President Buhari can explain to Nigerians what man­ner of Economic theory en­courages borrowing of N1.84 trillion to fund a N6 trillion budget. As for me, it is nothing but voodoo economic theory and Nigerians must take note that the income that should ac­crue to them in five years’ time is about to be spent in one year by the Buhari’s APC govern­ment,” the governor said.